ABSTRACT
A Daoist priest (daoshi) named Zhao Zujian 趙祖堅, the Record of the Listener tells us, practiced therapeutic exorcism by the ritual program called Five Thunders. During the exorcist procedure, he summoned spirits for an interrogation in which he would make the spirit possess his assistant in order to facilitate communication. One day during the ritual, his young assistant unexpectedly jumped up and, in a roaring voice, announced himself to be the late tenth-century Daoist master Tan Zixiao 譚紫霄 coming to help Zhao to advance in the Five Thunders ritual. But first he needed to know what knowledge Zhao had already acquired. Zhao replied, “Only the four talismans that were transmitted to this world by Zhenwu” (Yijianzhi yi 5.831–832; Davis 2001: 80–82). Zhao’s answer marks Zhenwu as an essential source of the Thunder Rites, one of the most important ritual movements in post-Tang Daoism.
